Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 14:

Although probably the conduct of the Codrington parishioners was unusual, it is certain that in the seventeenth century smoking at meetings held, not in the church itself, but in the vestry, was common. The churchwardens' accounts of St. Mary, Leicester, 1665-6, record the expenditure—"In beer and tobacco from first to last 7s. 10d." In those of St. Alphege, London Wall, for 1671, there are the entries—"For Pipes and Tobaccoe in the Vestry 2s.," and "For a grosse of pipes at severall times 2s." In the next century, however, the practice was modified. The St. Alphege accounts for 1739 have the entry—"Ordered that there be no Smoaking nor Drinking for the future in the Vestry Room during the time business is doing on pain of forfeiting one shilling, Assention Day excepted." From this it would seem fair to infer (1) that there was no objection to the lighting of pipes in the vestry after the business of the meeting had been transacted; and (2) that on Ascension Day for some inscrutable reason there was no prohibition at all of "Smoaking and Drinking."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 6:

The attractions and the atmosphere of provincial coffee-houses were much the same as those of the London resorts. A German gentleman who visited Cambridge in July and August 1710 remarked that in the Greeks' coffee-house in that town, in the morning and after 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you could meet the chief professors and doctors, who read the papers over a cup of coffee and a pipe of tobacco. One of the learned doctors took the German visitor to the weekly meeting of a Music Club in one of the colleges. Here were assembled bachelors, masters and doctors of music of the University—no professionals were employed—who performed vocal and instrumental music to their mutual gratification, though, apparently, not to the satisfaction of the visitor, who records his opinion that the music was "very poor." "It lasted," he says, "till 11 P.M., there was besides smoking and drinking of wine, though we did not do much of either. At 11 the reckoning was called for, and each person paid 2s."

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